Vendor Data Manager (Manchester)

Would you like to kick start your career in a supportive, collaborative and innovative company?

Do you enjoy working as part of an enthusiastic, passionate, and collaborative team?  

Vendor Data Manager

Role Overview:  

The Vendor Data Manager is a strategic and cross-functional leader, responsible for overseeing the entire lifecycle of product data within Softcat from its acquisition to its eventual deletion. A key part of this is ensuring integrity, security and accessibility of vendor data by collaborating with different teams to maintain high standards and high data quality.  

Success. The Softcat Way.  

At Softcat we want to support you at every stage of your career. Whether that means stepping up into a more senior role, taking on more responsibilities in your current role or broadening your skills and experiences in a different department, we encourage all our employees to develop and grow with us.

Key Responsibilities:  

• Working with the Head of Business Partnering to develop a clear roadmap for data products aligned with business goals and user needs.  
• Conduct market research and competitive analysis to identify opportunities for improvements to Softcat's vendor data. This could include looking at new sources of data (from our vendors) to further enhance the enrichment of our vendor data or understanding best practice for managing our vendor data.  
• Master Data Management (MDM): Responsible for creating and maintaining a single, consistent and accurate source of truth for Softcat's critical vendor data. The data manager is responsible for ensuring this data is standardised across all systems, preventing inconsistencies and errors. The development and management of business processes to support these responsibilities will form a major part of the job for this Vendor Data Manager.  
• Data Quality Management: Responsible for the process of ensuring data is accurate, complete, consistent and timely. The Data Manager will implement rules and processes to cleanse data, validate its quality and monitor it for any issues. This is a continuous effort to maintain a high level of trust in the data used for business decisions.
• Responsible for implementing and managing security measures to protect sensitive data from unauthorised access, breaches and cyberattacks. This involves ensuring that data platforms and services are regularly audited to ensure policies are followed (such as ROPAs) and access controls are in place. This will be done in conjunction with the data owners and owners of the different services.  

• Work with the data leadership team to create and maintain a comprehensive data strategy for vendor data that aligns with Softcat's business goals. This includes defining what to collect, how it will be stored, and how it will be used to drive decisions.  

Required Skills & Qualifications:  

• Strong understanding of data analytics, data engineering, and machine learning concepts.   
• Have a strong understanding of data governance and data quality. Knowledge of how data integration and ETL works in an organisation like Softcat. Solid understanding of data security and compliance or the ability to learn this in the context of managing vendor data for Softcat.  
• Knowledge or experience of MS Purview, CluedIn and PowerBI would be beneficial.